Philosophers Of Science In Combat

The Game Art Design That Brings A Retro Edge To Battling Scientists

Brazilian illustrator and animator, Diego Sanches, loves all things science fiction. He’s even made his own comic books, an annual set in a post-apocalyptic world, which is now successfully in its third year of print. Working and living in Sao Paolo, Brazil, his latest work, Science Combat, could be seen as an ingenuous convergence of his first love, science fiction, and a fascination with gaming.

Charles Darwin

Albert Einstein

Stephen Hawking

The art design for the game gives us a prototype, where we can image what it would be like to watch world famous philosophers of science from history battle against each other. There’s Stephen Hawking, Marie Curie, Pythagorus, Nikola Tesla, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton all fighting to the title, armed with their own personalised moves based on the theories and concepts they developed.

Commissioned by Superinteressante magazine, Science Combat is a game where the idea is to make a link between the “powers” of each character and her or his discoveries and inventions. Each character has 6 basic attacks and 2 special attacks, according to Fred Di Giacomo and Otavio Cohen, the original writers of the game. Game design, art and animations come from Diego Sanches himself. It’s a cool idea, and the graphics bring a retro game-boy-esque flair to trump over the indulgence of modern combat games.

Marie Curie

The Plus: What got you interested in this game?
Diego Sanches: They invited me at first to make a game design document only, but when I started thinking about the attacks, I wanted to make the graphics too. I made the idle animation of Einstein to show them how it could be done with pixel art, and they liked it.

Isaac Newton

TP: What was your artistic process in coming up with the moves for each scientist?
DS: Well, the most important thing was the research. The editors of Superinteressante helped me a lot with information about each scientist, their theories and discoveries so I could focus on translating them into moves that make sense on a fighting game. Fans of the genre will recognise some of the inspirations from other games for sure.

Pythagoras

TP: How long did it take you to design?
DS: It took me around 7 months to make all the character animations and stages.

TP: Tell us the coolest thing about your sci-fi comic series.
DS: QUAD is a sci-fi comic series that takes place on a post-apocalyptic world. It is written and illustrated by Eduardo Schaal, Eduardo Ferigato, Aluísio C. Santos and me. Since 2013, we are releasing an album with four stories per year. We are now on QUAD 3. Each story is written and drawn by the same artist, and although the stories are independent from each other at first, they are all set on the same “universe”. Our characters range from a group of hoverbikers called the Trashmen who gathers forgotten objects from the past, a mechanic called Terah and her black cat sidekick Elvis, an exorcist robot called Trent, an astronaut explorer from outer Earth colonies called Captain Lucas, and more. You can check the first volume containing four stories in english here.

Nikola Tesla

TP: What comes after Science Combat?
DS: Well, my main focus are on my comics. I plan on releasing a solo album on the QUAD universe this year and I’m currently writing a webcomics series that I will release next year. That said, I love making games too so I’m always open for business.